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Speaker 2: Oh hello, twenty twenty four Alley. Here, this is an
Speaker 2: encore while I am napping in a human sized dog
Speaker 2: bed in front of a fireplace for the holidays. What
Speaker 2: a way to start twenty twenty five folks, I wanted
Speaker 2: you to have this episode at the beginning of January.
Speaker 2: This is a reminder of scientifically what actually makes us
Speaker 2: happy and keeps us happy. We all need this one.
Speaker 3: Please enjoy.
Speaker 2: I love it. I'm happy to have you listen. Oh hey,
Speaker 2: it's that guy who saw you see him bump his
Speaker 2: head and then you smile at each other. Like that's okay.
Speaker 2: Ali Ward back with an episode of Ologies. It's going
Speaker 2: to fix your whole life. Just kidding, Actually maybe not.
Speaker 2: It very well might fix your life. I love the
Speaker 2: life Fixer episodes, and this ologist is someone I've had
Speaker 2: in my sites for a few years. We mentioned her
Speaker 2: work in the Oesomology episode with Neil Pazrica, and instead
Speaker 2: of just citing her, we're essentially interrogating her now to
Speaker 2: shake her for brain science. So she got her bachelor's
Speaker 2: in psychology and her master's and PhD in cognition and
Speaker 2: Brain behavior from Harvard University and is now a cognitive
Speaker 2: scientist and a psychology professor at Yale, where she has
Speaker 2: taught the course Psychology and the Good Life. Oh, she's
Speaker 2: been a TED speaker, she was named one of Time
Speaker 2: magazines leading Campus Celebrities, and she hosts a podcast called
Speaker 2: The Happiness Lab. So it's been a wonky few years
Speaker 2: we all know. And as one person who wrote a
Speaker 2: review this week of Ology said, it always brings a
Speaker 2: smile to my face when I hear people talk about
Speaker 2: their passions. I'm grateful every day for Ologies and giving
Speaker 2: me my life back. Ajbuckston, who left that review I'm
Speaker 2: very glad you're here. Thank you for leaving that fresh
Speaker 2: one and a twenty twenty four reviewer, vfarm, who wrote that,
Speaker 2: without fail, my favorite episodes are those on topics I
Speaker 2: had no interest in, y'all, vampires, trees, gar brilliantly unenthusiastic sounding,
Speaker 2: crab experts. There's nothing quite so wonderful. Thank you v
Speaker 2: farm forgetting it. And thanks to everyone who leaves me reviews.
Speaker 2: They keep the show up in the charts. They keep
Speaker 2: me from crying on days that are challenging. Also, heads up,
Speaker 2: if you prefer podcasts without swearing, we have a slew
Speaker 2: of them. They're called smologies and you can subscribe tosmologies
Speaker 2: now wherever you get podcasts, they're in their own separate
Speaker 2: feed in case you need to listen while you carpool
Speaker 2: to school. Okay, thank you to all the patrons who
Speaker 2: left questions for this ologist. You too can join that
Speaker 2: club cost twenty five cents an episode at patreon dot com. Okay,
Speaker 2: so let's get into it. You demonology. Will I say
Speaker 2: it right even one time? This episode? Stick around to
Speaker 2: find out. So this is the science of happiness and
Speaker 2: it's been on the ology books a long time. It
Speaker 2: comes from eudemon, which is Greek for a benevolent demon
Speaker 2: or a good spirit, and it was a term used
Speaker 2: by nineteenth century humanistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and he called
Speaker 2: eudeminology the art of ordering our lives so as to
Speaker 2: obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success. But
Speaker 2: we're talking about the science of this art. So how
Speaker 2: to shed the very comfortable, crusty shell of dissatisfaction and
Speaker 2: anxiety with some good steps that have been proven by
Speaker 2: research people to make your brain less of a miserable bummer.
Speaker 2: So press pause on your sad inner goblins and open
Speaker 2: your ears to hear about wanting versus craving, being happy
Speaker 2: in your life, being happy with your life, How happiness
Speaker 2: is even measured, lottery winter statistics, the wealth of free time,
Speaker 2: the power of a walk wheelbarrows of distractions, When does
Speaker 2: positivity become toxic? How to get around the achiness of
Speaker 2: the word gratitude, and some practical tips to enjoy life
Speaker 2: on planet Earth before you're a pile of forgotten bones
Speaker 2: with cognitive scientist, psychology professor, happiness lab host Yale researcher,
Speaker 2: and you demonologist, doctor Lori Santos. Hello, doctor Santos, how
Speaker 2: are you?
Speaker 3: I'm great? Thanks.
Speaker 2: I'm sure as a happiness doctor, as a professor of happiness,
Speaker 2: you probably are inclined to say I feel great, We're off.
Speaker 3: You'd think I'm inclined to be honest, because one thing
Speaker 3: the happiness science shows is that being honest about our
Speaker 3: negative emotions is important too. So when things are tough,
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, it's tough, but you know, but
Speaker 3: today's been a good day.
Speaker 2: That's great. I'm already learning so much. Can I have
Speaker 2: you say, really quick, your first and last name and
Speaker 2: your pronouns.
Speaker 3: Sure, I'm Laurie Santos, and my pronouns are she her.
Speaker 2: You have been on my radar for years actually, and
Speaker 2: so I'm really stoked to talk to you because this
Speaker 2: is an ology that I've wanted to do for I
Speaker 2: think since before I even started the podcast. Do you
Speaker 2: are you familiar with this? That word demo wed homology?
Speaker 2: What homology? What a monology?
Speaker 3: No? Maybe that word it's ue ed eo oh sorry, yes,
Speaker 3: eudymology maybe eutomology, yes, like you diamonia is the yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess this is the study of that
Speaker 2: feeling or that state. And you're the perfect person to
Speaker 2: talk to you, because obviously you have your podcast and
Speaker 2: you teach courses at Yale about this. So can you
Speaker 2: tell me a little bit about your background. How did
Speaker 2: you start studying cognition and feelings? Where did it start?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I've been a psychologist, you know, forever. I
Speaker 3: think I've always been interested in the human mind and
Speaker 3: how it works and things. But you know, before I
Speaker 3: get into the study of happiness specifically, I was really
Speaker 3: interested in the origins of cognition, so the origins of
Speaker 3: how we think, and I study that by looking at
Speaker 3: non human animals. I studied how monkeys and dogs think
Speaker 3: about the world. And that was kind of my day
Speaker 3: job until I took on a new role on Yale's campus,
Speaker 3: where I became what's called a head of college. And
Speaker 3: so Yale's kind of like one of these weird schools
Speaker 3: like in Harry Potter where there are like colleges within
Speaker 3: a college, you know, like kind of Gryffindora Slytherin sort
Speaker 3: of thing. I'm head of Syllomon College and that means
Speaker 3: I live on campus with students. And when I started
Speaker 3: the role. I was expecting it to be you know,
Speaker 3: like you know, rainbows and parties and just like happy
Speaker 3: students all the time. But when I got there, you know,
Speaker 3: I was really seeing the college student mental health crisis
Speaker 3: up close and personal, you know, with so many students
Speaker 3: reporting feeling depressed and anxious. And you know, even if
Speaker 3: they weren't you know, at clinical levels of mental health dysfunction,
Speaker 3: they were just kind of feeling stressed and sort of
Speaker 3: fast forwarding their life, you know, and just feeling overwhelmed
Speaker 3: and really busy. And so I kind of wanted to
Speaker 3: do something about it. You know, I didn't like being
Speaker 3: in this culture where so many students were stressed and
Speaker 3: depressed and just kind of not enjoying their time in college.
Speaker 3: And so I thought, well, let me, you know, figure
Speaker 3: out what my field of psychology says about this. And
Speaker 3: psychology gives us so many tips that we can use
Speaker 3: to feel better. And so I thought, all right, great,
Speaker 3: I'll you know, I'll do what professors do. I'll make
Speaker 3: a whole class on this. So, you know, I prepped
Speaker 3: this class that I christened Psychology in the Good Life,
Speaker 3: and you know, slapped it together thinking, you know, thirty
Speaker 3: or so students would take it. And you can imagine
Speaker 3: my surprise when a quarter of the entire campus enrolled
Speaker 3: the first time I taught it. Yeah, we couldn't. We
Speaker 3: couldn't fit the class anywhere. We had to teach it
Speaker 3: in a concert hall on campus because that was place
Speaker 3: it would fit. But you know, that showed me students
Speaker 3: are voting with their feet. They don't like this culture
Speaker 3: of feeling so overwhelmed and stressed. And I think they
Speaker 3: really wanted, you know, science based strategies they could use
Speaker 3: to feel better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, much different I think than just Instagram quotes on
Speaker 2: a page. Here, You've got someone who studies the brain,
Speaker 2: who study psychology. You're probably people go into it with
Speaker 2: a little bit of faith that you'll have some evidence
Speaker 2: based information.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. And you know, I mean, I think, you
Speaker 3: know what. One of the things that's interesting is we
Speaker 3: learn as you look into the science, you learn that,
Speaker 3: you know, some of those ancient pieces of wisdom we're
Speaker 3: quite accurate, you know. Some of the platitudes we see
Speaker 3: are quite accurate, you know, but some not so much, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that's why we need an empirical approach.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We can just ask scientifically. Okay, if we find happy people,
Speaker 3: what are they doing differently, what are their strategies, how
Speaker 3: are they spending their time? And then we can let
Speaker 3: them not so happy people copy that and really test you.
Speaker 3: Are they feeling happier? Are they feeling less depressed? And
Speaker 3: you know, these days we have almost you know, two
Speaker 3: decades worth of scientific work that's done that in this
Speaker 3: field of positive psychology, and you know, we've learned a lot.
Speaker 3: There's lots of evidence based tips out there for what
Speaker 3: you can do to feel better.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the term positive psychology was popularized by doctor
Speaker 2: Martin Seligman, who felt that the contemporary psychology was just
Speaker 2: too deeply focused on what's fucked up about us, not
Speaker 2: how can we live better? So it focuses on things
Speaker 2: like self discovery and a sense of purpose and expressing
Speaker 2: yourself through creativity and authentically. So we're going to get
Speaker 2: to more of that in a bit. But first, from
Speaker 2: small hairy primates to larger, slightly less hairy primates like us,
Speaker 2: and you know where did you make that jump from
Speaker 2: non human primates and dogs into humans? Did you find
Speaker 2: that a lot of the research just correlates based on
Speaker 2: what our brain structures are how our neurons work.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting. The work I was doing with dogs
Speaker 3: and monkeys was more kind of figuring out, you know,
Speaker 3: how they decide what they know about the world. But
Speaker 3: there was a rich similarity, which is that when you
Speaker 3: start looking into the happiness science work, you quickly realize
Speaker 3: a big way that we get things wrong, which is
Speaker 3: that we have some really bad theories about the kinds
Speaker 3: of things that make us happy. You know, when I
Speaker 3: talk to my students and on my podcast, I often say,
Speaker 3: you know, our minds are lying to us about the
Speaker 3: sorts of things that will make us happy. You know,
Speaker 3: we think it's money and changing our circumstances and you know,
Speaker 3: getting the perfect accolade or the perfect grade. But those
Speaker 3: things seem not to work. And that tied really nicely
Speaker 3: to some of the work we were doing in animals,
Speaker 3: where we showed that some of the deepest irrationalities we
Speaker 3: have in our species might be evolutionarily old. They're kind
Speaker 3: of built in. And I think the same thing about
Speaker 3: some of the things we get wrong about happiness. Like,
Speaker 3: even knowing these studies, it's hard for me to change
Speaker 3: my intuitions. You know, I still think, well, if I,
Speaker 3: you know, hit powerball today, oh man, I'd be so
Speaker 3: much happier. Or you know, if it just wasn't raining today,
Speaker 3: I'd be so much happier. If you know, we could
Speaker 3: change my circumstances, dress that would really improve my well being.
Speaker 3: But I know the scientific work that suggests that's probably
Speaker 3: not the case.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I looked into some data on if powerball
Speaker 2: winners are happier, and it's a mixed bag of money.
Speaker 2: So one thing for sure, people do take more vacations
Speaker 2: when they win the lottery, And by contrast, sixty percent
Speaker 2: of Americans take zero vacations a year. And apparently one
Speaker 2: thing that pleases us so much about vacations is just
Speaker 2: having something, anything, to look forward to. So just start
Speaker 2: peppering your calendar with any excursion you can, even if
Speaker 2: it's just like a nice bowl of soup next Wednesday
Speaker 2: or a hike next weekend, pack a picnic. Leisure time
Speaker 2: on any scale is apparently worth a million bucks and
Speaker 2: tax free. So hey, is happiness more about being happy
Speaker 2: with ourselves and accepting ourselves or external circumstances or is
Speaker 2: it mission base Like you're on the right path to
Speaker 2: doing something that you believe in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a few of all of those things. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think one thing in terms of our circumstances. You know,
Speaker 3: it's worth noting that if you're in really dire traumatic circumstances, yes,
Speaker 3: getting different circumstances will really, you know, improve your well being.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're living below the poverty line, or
Speaker 3: if you're in an abusive relationship, you do want to
Speaker 3: change those circumstances. But for many of the people privileged
Speaker 3: enough to listen to this podcast, who can you know
Speaker 3: put food on the table, you know, has a roof
Speaker 3: over the head and so on. You know, changing your
Speaker 3: circumstances might not affect your happiness as much as you think.
Speaker 3: For many of us circumstances, isn't the changing our circumstances
Speaker 3: isn't the fastest path to feeling a little bit happier.
Speaker 2: So is it? Mind over matter? This is where you
Speaker 2: ask smart persons and do fee questions.
Speaker 3: Often it's more about changing our mindset, which incorporates a
Speaker 3: lot of the things you mentioned. You know, it's about
Speaker 3: changing the way we see the world, changing the way
Speaker 3: we see our circumstances, changing the extent to which we're
Speaker 3: present with our circumstances and our emotions, and it's all
Speaker 3: so you know, tapping into things that give us meaning
Speaker 3: in life, you know, giving us us a sense of purpose.
Speaker 3: You know, so all of those things seem to matter
Speaker 3: a lot more than what our salary level is or
Speaker 3: for my students, you know, the last grade they got
Speaker 3: on their midterm and things like that.
Speaker 2: Backing up a little bit, what is happiness? How do
Speaker 2: you even define it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Tricky, I mean we could take you know, many many
Speaker 3: podcasts ups, so, you know, fighting over a definition of happiness.
Speaker 3: You know, social scientists tend to try to be simpler
Speaker 3: than philosophers, so they go for a definition of happiness
Speaker 3: that's pretty easy to measure. And so most social scientists
Speaker 3: think about happiness as sort of being happy in your
Speaker 3: life and with your life. And so you know, being
Speaker 3: happy in your life is just having lots of positive emotions, right,
Speaker 3: you know, like you have experienced joy and laughter and
Speaker 3: fun and less often things like sadness and anger. Not
Speaker 3: not that those aren't there at all, right, because a
Speaker 3: full and complete life includes some negative emotions, but you
Speaker 3: know the ratio is pretty good. That's sort of being
Speaker 3: happy in your life. Being happy with your life? Is
Speaker 3: that meaning, that sense of purpose. It's the answer to
Speaker 3: the question, all things considered, how satisfied am I with
Speaker 3: my life? And those two constructs are ones that scientists
Speaker 3: measure separately, and it's worth noting that they do sometimes dissociate.
Speaker 3: You know that. I think if you go on Instagram,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people who are happy in
Speaker 3: their life. They're eating these hedonistic meals on some plane somewhere,
Speaker 3: but you know, if you look at how they're feeling
Speaker 3: with their life, I bet they're feeling pretty empty. And
Speaker 3: you can also have cases of the opposite. My dean
Speaker 3: who I live with here in the college, you know,
Speaker 3: she and her wife recently just had a baby and
Speaker 3: newborn baby. You know, you're really happy with your life,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this rich sense of meaning being a mom,
Speaker 3: but in your life dirty diapers and not sleeping, and
Speaker 3: so they can dissociate. But best case scenario is that
Speaker 3: you're feeling pretty high on both of those.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to pause us for a second just
Speaker 2: to ponder, how do you feel in your life? How
Speaker 2: are your days to days? Maybe some nice tea in
Speaker 2: the morning, some supportive coworkers maybe some evening knitting or
Speaker 2: a walk with a friend, or do you hate your
Speaker 2: coffee maker and you don't know why you started rewatching
Speaker 2: the Big Bang theory for episode one, You're tired, go
Speaker 2: to bed? Now, what about with your life? Do you
Speaker 2: feel a sense of purpose? Are you proud of your life?
Speaker 2: Do you feel authentic? Just think about it for a second.
Speaker 2: It's totally okay if you're like, some of it's good,
Speaker 2: some of it sucks eggs or I'm very fortunate? Why
Speaker 2: am I such a grumpy walrus?
Speaker 3: And there are lots of different hacks that we can
Speaker 3: do to improve both of those constructs.
Speaker 2: In terms of emotions themselves, is happiness an umbrella for
Speaker 2: things like joy and relief and satisfaction and contentment? Or
Speaker 2: are those all individual, separate emotions?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it kind of depends. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: we we and sometimes scientists, philosophers, you know, all of us,
Speaker 3: you know, we can get really kind of tied up
Speaker 3: on the specifics, right, you know, is joy a subcomponent
Speaker 3: of happiness or is it bigger than happiness? What about
Speaker 3: contentment and things like that? I'm more of the opinion
Speaker 3: of you kind of know them when you see him, right.
Speaker 3: You know, I want a construct that's easy enough that
Speaker 3: if I give people some sort of self report measure
Speaker 3: that they can tell me about it. But beyond that,
Speaker 3: I don't want to get into a big fight about well,
Speaker 3: is it joy? Is it contentment? Is it forty five
Speaker 3: percent or is it fifty per You know, I think
Speaker 3: you kind of know it when you see it, but
Speaker 3: we could probably dig in. I mean, there's nuance there.
Speaker 3: You know, the kind of calm contentment feels different than
Speaker 3: a kind of manic, excited happiness than you know, a
Speaker 3: deep sense of joy. You know, these these are different constructs,
Speaker 3: and maybe importantly so. But overall, what we're going for
Speaker 3: is as many of those as possible.
Speaker 2: And what about you in particular? I know that you
Speaker 2: said you can read the studies and understand and know,
Speaker 2: but sometimes it's it's hard to do. You know, how
Speaker 2: has your life changed since you switched a little bit
Speaker 2: of your career focus on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's definitely, like, statistically speaking, made me much happier.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a nerd, right, So I take these
Speaker 3: surveys myself about you know, how satisfied are you with
Speaker 3: your life? On a scale of one to ten and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. You know, on most ten point scales
Speaker 3: of both kind of happiness in my life and happiness
Speaker 3: with my life, I've gone up at least a point
Speaker 3: since focusing on this stuff. But it's not like magic, right,
Speaker 3: it's in part just because I'm I'm doing the things
Speaker 3: that I keep telling my students to do. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm practicing gratitude, I'm improving my social connection, I'm meditating more,
Speaker 3: I'm exercising, like, I'm doing all this stuff in a
Speaker 3: big list of Hey, if you do these things scientifically,
Speaker 3: seems like you'll feel better. And now doing those and
Speaker 3: I'm feeling better, So it kind of makes sense. There's
Speaker 3: also something wonderful about being the happiness professor because you know,
Speaker 3: I have a whole host of students and podcast listeners who,
Speaker 3: you know, if I'm not doing the right thing, will
Speaker 3: probably call me out. You know, you know my students,
Speaker 3: you know, ah has it going like, oh, I'm so frustrated.
Speaker 3: You know, it's such a and they're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: my students call me head of College Santos. So it's
Speaker 3: Hak Santos, it's what it's abbreviated. You to be like
Speaker 3: hax Santo's are you supposed to be practicing gratitude?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And it's like, okay, yes, you're right, you know, so
Speaker 3: I will get called out if I'm not practicing this stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like your friends come to you for
Speaker 2: more pep talks or fewer because they just look at
Speaker 2: your published work instead?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You know, I think my friends are my friends, right,
Speaker 3: you know, they don't necessarily see me as a happiness
Speaker 3: expert you have anything. I think the happiness expert thing
Speaker 3: can become a little bit you know, annoying at times
Speaker 3: of like, well, you know I have a podcast on that.
Speaker 3: You know, It's like, no, they just want me to
Speaker 3: be their friend. Yeah, and so try to separate the
Speaker 3: two a little bit.
Speaker 2: Shit, Am I not supposed to talk about podcast episodes
Speaker 2: with my friends? Because I've told a lot of people
Speaker 2: about wildfires and how lizards have two dogs? Let's change
Speaker 2: the subject. Well, let's get into some of those factors,
Speaker 2: because I know that you you rattle them off, and
Speaker 2: it's a lot of things that we we feel like
Speaker 2: we know, but we don't necessarily know. Why are the
Speaker 2: mechanisms of how that works? You know, exercise practicing gratitude.
Speaker 2: Can you run me down those things and in a
Speaker 2: nutshell tell me why do they work?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean, you know, there's different kinds of categories
Speaker 3: of them, you know, but one whole set of categories,
Speaker 3: or there's a whole host of things that make us
Speaker 3: happier that are about connecting with other people. Right, literally
Speaker 3: being around other people is considered a necessary condition for
Speaker 3: high happiness and a lot of studies and that's true
Speaker 3: even for introverts. So just literally connecting with and being
Speaker 3: around other people super useful for happiness. But another way
Speaker 3: that you connect with other people is to focus on
Speaker 3: what makes them happy. Lots of evidence that doing random
Speaker 3: acts of kindness, spending money and time on other people,
Speaker 3: that makes us feel happier. And in some cases, especially
Speaker 3: with spending money, you're happier spending money on others than
Speaker 3: you even are spending on yourself, you know. So this
Speaker 3: this attitude of social connection and doing for others, you know,
Speaker 3: a powerful set of practices to make us feel happier.
Speaker 3: Another set of practices really has to do with our mindset.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Do we have a mindset of kind of griping and
Speaker 3: complaining or are we focused on things we're grateful for.
Speaker 3: You know, are we paying attention to the negative things
Speaker 3: in life or are we focused on delights? Are we
Speaker 3: present enough to savor some of the good things, and
Speaker 3: just you know present in general to notice our emotions
Speaker 3: and notice things. There's evidence suggesting that a wandering mind
Speaker 3: is an unhappy mind. So just the act of a
Speaker 3: mindset of being present can be really powerful for happiness.
Speaker 2: So for more on a daily practice of looking for
Speaker 2: things that aren't the fucking worst, I linked the awesomology
Speaker 2: episode in the show notes also learning this next term
Speaker 2: killed me. I'm dead. I'm a fungus now.
Speaker 3: And then there's just a whole host of things that
Speaker 3: I think we kind of know are good for our
Speaker 3: physical health but we forget can be so important for
Speaker 3: our mental health. You know, things like taking time to exercise,
Speaker 3: taking time to sleep, which is a huge one, and
Speaker 3: just having like some time off. There's lots of evidence
Speaker 3: that something called time affluence, the subjective sense that you
Speaker 3: have some free time, is much more critical for happiness
Speaker 3: we than we realize. And so, you know, all of
Speaker 3: those things as I say them, you know, we can
Speaker 3: go through the scientific studies and so on, and you know,
Speaker 3: your listeners might be thinking like, well, I kind of
Speaker 3: know that. And what I like to say is it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's common wisdom, but it's not common practice.
Speaker 3: You know how many of those things that I just
Speaker 3: rattled off aren't things that you're doing right now? You
Speaker 3: know that. And then that's why I think it's really
Speaker 3: critical to know the science, because as you hear the
Speaker 3: science of, say, nutrition, you think like, oh, maybe I
Speaker 3: should eat healthier. I think as you hear the science
Speaker 3: of how things like social connection and exercise work, you
Speaker 3: start thinking, oh, maybe those are things I really do
Speaker 3: need to get in more of. You know, I kind
Speaker 3: of knew it, but now that I see the evidence,
Speaker 3: this does seem really important.
Speaker 2: So connecting with people talking face to face is better
Speaker 2: for us than just text. The phone works too, face
Speaker 2: time is even better than the phone. Also helping others
Speaker 2: when you can looking for lovely shiny things amid the
Speaker 2: compost pile that can feel like life. Also sleep and exercise.
Speaker 2: It can be immediate, or like exercise, it can be
Speaker 2: a few weeks before these habits really take root and
Speaker 2: you start to feel better. So don't give up. Give
Speaker 2: it a few weeks, especially since it's free, Are you
Speaker 2: feeling lazy and annoyed? Don't worry. A lot of us
Speaker 2: feel that way when we start doing something that will
Speaker 2: keep us alive and happy. So I asked doctor Santos
Speaker 2: for us, why am I like this? Why do you
Speaker 2: think from some sort of evolutionary standpoint, when we're bombed out,
Speaker 2: it's harder to do the things that would make us
Speaker 2: less bombed out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, super frustrating. Like the mind is designed in like
Speaker 3: a really stupid way. You know, we know this, you know,
Speaker 3: from other evolutionary studies, but definitely when it comes when
Speaker 3: it comes to happiness. That's the case. In one of
Speaker 3: my upcoming episodes of The Happiness Lab, I talk about
Speaker 3: this really stupid design feature of the brain where there's
Speaker 3: just a different, like a whole different brain system that
Speaker 3: codes for what we like, you know, so the things
Speaker 3: we really enjoy versus the things that we want, the
Speaker 3: things that we're motivated to go after, or that we crave.
Speaker 3: The simplest example is like, you know, sometimes when I'm
Speaker 3: having a bad day at work, I just like crave
Speaker 3: like plopping down and watching Netflix, or like eating a
Speaker 3: cupcake or having like a huge glass of wine. But like,
Speaker 3: if you actually look at how much I would like that,
Speaker 3: the Netflix is going to make me apathetic, and the
Speaker 3: cupcake is going to give me the jitters and the wine,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sleep very well. Like ultimately, the
Speaker 3: liking has this disconnect from the wanting, and you get
Speaker 3: it in the reverse direction too, Like I don't after
Speaker 3: a long day at or crave a really hard peloton ride,
Speaker 3: or like you know, like a really hard yoga class,
Speaker 3: or like taking a long walk with a friend. I
Speaker 3: don't have like the same motivation I have for that
Speaker 3: that I do for like the cupcake or the oring
Speaker 3: relaxing thing or a hit of social media. But even
Speaker 3: though I don't have the wanting, if I actually engage
Speaker 3: in that practice, I'll feel so much better. And so
Speaker 3: this is a dumb way to design a brain when
Speaker 3: you think that wanting would kind of go with liking,
Speaker 3: but it just sort of doesn't. And that means we
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time craving and easily going after
Speaker 3: things we won't really like. And it means we don't
Speaker 3: have mechanisms except very kind of rational push ourselves. We
Speaker 3: don't have these kind of low grade craving mechanisms to
Speaker 3: go after things that really will benefit our happiness, but
Speaker 3: we don't realize we want them.
Speaker 2: How do we hijack that? Like, how do we trick
Speaker 2: ourselves into doing the thing that we don't think that
Speaker 2: we want to do, but we like doing it is
Speaker 2: good for us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well there's you know, there's two ways to do it.
Speaker 3: You know. One is this very rational force yourself way,
Speaker 3: which which I harness a lot, which is like, hmm okay,
Speaker 3: even though I don't really feel like calling anyone right now,
Speaker 3: I know the science and if I talk to someone,
Speaker 3: I'll feel better, right, you know, so you kind of
Speaker 3: the force yourself approach, right, But the force your self
Speaker 3: approach works best if it's paired with the second practice,
Speaker 3: which is forcing yourself to notice what you like, because
Speaker 3: the wanting system can update. It just doesn't do it naturally.
Speaker 3: But after a really hard yoga class or after calling
Speaker 3: that friend when you didn't feel like it, take time
Speaker 3: to notice like does this feel good? And you're like, yeah, this,
Speaker 3: actually this actually feels nice. I had this, you know,
Speaker 3: pre COVID when I was going to a yoga studio.
Speaker 3: This wonderful yoga instruct through it right, at the end
Speaker 3: of a hard class, would have you take this moment like, okay,
Speaker 3: now take a moment to notice, notice how you feel
Speaker 3: after this class, Like notice how this made you feel?
Speaker 3: And after you're like, damn, that was great, Like I
Speaker 3: want more of this feeling.
Speaker 2: You know, So when you pick the salad and stop
Speaker 2: pretending that diet coke is water and you go for
Speaker 2: the slowest, sweatiest shuffle around the block, but you do it,
Speaker 2: take a minute and absolutely relish how wonderful and brave
Speaker 2: and heroic your efforts were and how you feel. We
Speaker 2: deserve this, but.
Speaker 3: We tend not to be present, We tend not to
Speaker 3: mindfully notice. And that's true for this stuff you really crave,
Speaker 3: but you might not like after you, like you open
Speaker 3: the fridge four times and grab that thing to eat
Speaker 3: that you didn't really feel like, take a moment to
Speaker 3: be like, am I satisfied now? Not really? You might
Speaker 3: want to grab something else. And once you notice that,
Speaker 3: your wanting system can be like okay, kind of duly noted,
Speaker 3: got it, got it, Let's take note of that for
Speaker 3: next time. So kind of forcing yourself to ignore your
Speaker 3: wanting system and just act through this very rational path
Speaker 3: but then also mindfully noticing what you really like. Those
Speaker 3: things can start to update your craving system at least
Speaker 3: a little bit. But the systems are always going to
Speaker 3: be disconnected, unfortunately. Is just our minds are not really
Speaker 3: designed that well for wanting all the things that we like.
Speaker 2: What about like our self image? How much does that
Speaker 2: play into our happiness? And how much does monitoring our
Speaker 2: likes and our social media and you know, looking at
Speaker 2: pictures of our face through a distorted camera lens, how
Speaker 2: much is that affecting our happiness and how we see
Speaker 2: our lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, one another dumb feature of the way our
Speaker 3: minds work when it comes to happiness is the fact
Speaker 3: that we don't necessarily think of the good things are
Speaker 3: in our life in objective terms. We think of them
Speaker 3: in relative terms. And that means that seeing ourselves on
Speaker 3: social media, seeing what's going on with other people on
Speaker 3: social media, that can really affect our happiness in some
Speaker 3: dumb ways. But take your body image for example, right,
Speaker 3: you know, you might objectively think you have a certain
Speaker 3: you know, body that's good or not so good or whatever,
Speaker 3: But we don't necessarily think in terms of our objective sense.
Speaker 3: We think relative. And so as soon as you go
Speaker 3: on Instagram and you look at, you know, the bikini
Speaker 3: pictures of someone else, or take your objective sense of
Speaker 3: how good your vacation was or how rich you were,
Speaker 3: how nice your house is. Then you know, you watch
Speaker 3: the celebrity you know, TikTok feeds and you're like, oh, like,
Speaker 3: my house isn't that good or my vacation sucked and
Speaker 3: things like that. We're really susceptible to social comparison when
Speaker 3: it comes to evaluating anything in our life. Our abilities
Speaker 3: are our amount of money or salary or a house, whatever,
Speaker 3: and that means that we can easily start feeling bad
Speaker 3: even when we're in objectively a good situation. My favorite
Speaker 3: extreme example of this was a study that looked at
Speaker 3: the emotions of different Olympic medalists. So probably gold medalists
Speaker 3: probably feeling pretty happy, like you know, makes sense, they
Speaker 3: just want a gold medal, Yeah, But what about silver medalists,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe slightly less happy. But what research is
Speaker 3: find is that if you look at the emotional expressions
Speaker 3: this silver medalists show on the stand.
Speaker 4: Axana Bayul has won the gold in backstage, Nancy Kerrigan
Speaker 4: and Shannlou exchange congratulations and consolations for silver and broad.
Speaker 3: They're not just slightly less happy, they're actively feeling awful.
Speaker 3: They're showing signs of extreme sadness, contempt anger. Like it's
Speaker 3: not just like slightly less happy, it's actively negative. Wow.
Speaker 3: If you think about what I just said, it it
Speaker 3: sort of makes sense, right, because the silver medalist isn't
Speaker 3: thinking I'm objectively the second best in the world, I
Speaker 3: objectively beat like the other seven billion people, like whatever
Speaker 3: my sport is. They're just thinking about one reference point
Speaker 3: that makes them feel awful, the gold. They were almost
Speaker 3: there and they didn't get it, so they feel like
Speaker 3: a loser. But what's striking is if you look at
Speaker 3: the bronze medalist, you see something completely different because their
Speaker 3: reference point isn't the gold right like they were I
Speaker 3: don't know, like you know, thirty seconds off where they
Speaker 3: like lost two matches or something. Their reference point is like,
Speaker 3: if I had just messed up a little bit more,
Speaker 3: I would go home completely empty handed, right like I
Speaker 3: wouldn't even be on the stand at all. Right, And
Speaker 3: so they're showing signs of true ecstasy. In some cases,
Speaker 3: they're showing expressions that are even happier than the gold
Speaker 3: medalist because their reference point is like, Whew, look how
Speaker 3: lucky I am. Like that almost totally screwed up.
Speaker 2: So Nancy Kerrigan displayed a famously sour face receiving the
Speaker 2: silver in nineteen ninety four, and then in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: a study was published in the Journal of Personal and
Speaker 2: Social Psychology title quote when less is more counterfactual thinking
Speaker 2: and satisfaction among Olympic medalists. Counterfactual thinking, huh, that is
Speaker 2: the sinking, gnawing feeling of what could have been or wow,
Speaker 2: a fudged it up. So one researcher, doctor Andrea Lewangrath,
Speaker 2: a University of Iowa Marketing assistant professor, did follow up
Speaker 2: studies on metalists to confirm that first study, and recently
Speaker 2: said in an interview that you don't have to be
Speaker 2: the second best out of eight billion. There are all
Speaker 2: always going to be people who we can compare ourselves
Speaker 2: to that are better, faster, smarter, or whatever, and that
Speaker 2: can make us feel relatively bad. So what is the
Speaker 2: lesson here? Think twice before you get a no regrets tattoo,
Speaker 2: and maybe consider a counter your counterfactuals tattoo instead, and
Speaker 2: once the sting wears off, celebrate your silvers.
Speaker 3: You did it. And I love this metaphor because you know,
Speaker 3: it shows us that it doesn't matter what's going on objectively,
Speaker 3: it matters who we're comparing ourself against. And that means
Speaker 3: sometimes we can be an objectively a really good spot
Speaker 3: but feel kind of awful about it.
Speaker 2: And what about chemicals? Where are just the chemical hands
Speaker 2: that we were a dealt? When do those have the
Speaker 2: reins on the amount of happiness we feel?
Speaker 3: So, you know, we could think about the chemicals we're
Speaker 3: dealt in a couple ways. Often we think about it
Speaker 3: in terms of, you know, our kind of genetic lottery,
Speaker 3: right you are you naturally a happy person or you
Speaker 3: naturally a kind of down in the dumb person, And
Speaker 3: just like circumstances, what we find is that there is
Speaker 3: a genetic component to happiness, you know. So there, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're born from a long line of overly optimistic people,
Speaker 3: you're more likely to be overly optimistic. But the amount
Speaker 3: of that heritability is tiny, what you know, It's probably
Speaker 3: tinier than something like height or weight in the US,
Speaker 3: and especially with like weight we know that that's something
Speaker 3: that obviously your environment can shape a lot, and so there,
Speaker 3: while there is some heritable component to happiness, it's much
Speaker 3: tinier than we think. And this is really good news, right.
Speaker 3: You know, it would suck if you're like, hey, you're
Speaker 3: just born to be happy or born to be not
Speaker 3: so happy, and that's it. What the science is really
Speaker 3: telling us is that there's some heritable component, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot of action that we can take through our mindsets,
Speaker 3: through our behaviors to change things around. And that's great because,
Speaker 3: you know, putting this all together, it means our genetics
Speaker 3: don't predict our happiness that much, and our circumstances don't
Speaker 3: predict our happiness that much. Like we don't, you know,
Speaker 3: necessarily get to control whether we're born into you know,
Speaker 3: the complete luxury or born into poverty. We don't necessarily
Speaker 3: get to control what our genetic heritage is. But we
Speaker 3: all can completely control our mindsets and our behavior. So
Speaker 3: it's good news. The bad news is that changing those
Speaker 3: mindsets and behavior, as you probably guess, takes a lot
Speaker 3: of work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you ever have students who either come to
Speaker 2: you or who you hear about who aren't quite sure
Speaker 2: if it's time for medical intervention or is it time
Speaker 2: for just trying to hack their habits. How do we
Speaker 2: as individuals make that call?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I'm glad you brought this up
Speaker 3: because I think this is really important. You know, so
Speaker 3: many of the hacks you know, we are talking about
Speaker 3: today are ones that really can improve your well being.
Speaker 3: But you know, there's some points when you need to hack,
Speaker 3: and there's some points where you you know, need something
Speaker 3: you know that's much deeper. And the analogy like to
Speaker 3: use is, you know, imagine you go into your doctor
Speaker 3: and you say, hey, doctor, I have high blood pressure.
Speaker 3: You know what should I do? Your doctor might say, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, get on the treadmill and exercise a little
Speaker 3: bit more, you know, eat you know, here, eat these
Speaker 3: fruits and vegetables every day or something. But if you
Speaker 3: walked into your doctor's office and you're saying, doctor, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm having chest pains, I'm having a cute cardiac arrest
Speaker 3: right now, your doctor wouldn't be like, well, get on
Speaker 3: the treadmill, you know, like for half hour day, like
Speaker 3: your doctor would. You know, an emergency intervention would take place.
Speaker 3: And I think it's worth recognizing that our mental health
Speaker 3: works the same way. The kinds of things I'm talking
Speaker 3: about are in some sense preventative medicine. You know, they're
Speaker 3: there so that you don't wind up in a state
Speaker 3: of kind of acutely feeling clinically depressed or suicidal or
Speaker 3: something worse. Right, you know, you they're there so that
Speaker 3: you can protect your mental health so you don't get
Speaker 3: to that point. But if you're experiencing true depression, you know,
Speaker 3: hard for you to do your daily activities, or anxiety
Speaker 3: so powerful that you're experiencing panic attacks, that's a sign
Speaker 3: that you might need professional help. All the hacks I
Speaker 3: mentioned are good, you know, once you get out of
Speaker 3: that acute state, just like the heart attack person, as
Speaker 3: soon as you get out of experiencing cardiac arrest, the
Speaker 3: next step is going to be to go back to
Speaker 3: so some of those preventative measures once you kind of
Speaker 3: get out of the hospital. And I think the same
Speaker 3: thing is true for clinical parts of these diseases. You
Speaker 3: might also want to go back to experience and gratitude
Speaker 3: and meditating in these things, but it is important to
Speaker 3: get acute care. If the mental health situation you're in
Speaker 3: is acute.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great to know for people. You may know
Speaker 2: when you hit this level because your friends will say,
Speaker 2: I think you should see a doctor, dude, which is
Speaker 2: what happened to me when I was going through the
Speaker 2: hardest parts of my life and also had a couple
Speaker 2: medical conditions that turned my brain into bees. The doctor
Speaker 2: was like, well, shucks, you need more than a car wash.
Speaker 2: Let's check under the hood there, buddy. But yes, what
Speaker 2: is the technique for sloughing off persistent, crusty, muddy feelings
Speaker 2: when it comes to things like gratitude and meditation? How
Speaker 2: much is effective? Like how much can we get away
Speaker 2: with if we're feeling reel down to the dumps but
Speaker 2: we're low on motivation. How much gratitude is enough? How
Speaker 2: much meditation is enough? How much exercise it's enough?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think you know. One of the
Speaker 3: nice things about this being all this stuff being evidence
Speaker 3: based is that allows you to kind of do your
Speaker 3: own experimentation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The answer of how much meditation you you know, particular
Speaker 3: podcast listener need might depend on all kinds of things, right,
Speaker 3: and so the key is to sort of try it out.
Speaker 3: One thing we know, though, is that sometimes it takes
Speaker 3: less than you really expect. Take something like gratitude. There's
Speaker 3: evidence that just scribbling down three things that you're grateful
Speaker 3: for every day that can be enough to significantly boost
Speaker 3: your well being in as little as two weeks, Like
Speaker 3: doesn't take that much time. There's evidence, for example, from
Speaker 3: Hetty Kober's lab at Yale, that even as little as
Speaker 3: ten minutes of meditation a day can really start to
Speaker 3: improve your well being and some mental health symptoms. Right.
Speaker 2: For more on this, feel free to peruse papers such
Speaker 2: as Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Attention in Novices and let
Speaker 2: it Be Mindful Acceptance Downregulates pain and negative emotion, both
Speaker 2: published by doctor Hettikober. So scientists in lab coats have
Speaker 2: dedicated their research and their grant money budgets to proving
Speaker 2: that yes, meditation does help. It's free, it takes less
Speaker 2: time than making a sandwich. We can do this.
Speaker 3: Let's do this, and so it doesn't take long. What
Speaker 3: it takes some consistency. And so my instinct is like,
Speaker 3: because sometimes we hear these tips like all right, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna drop everything and do you know like seventy hours
Speaker 3: of meditation. It's like no, no, no, just start really small,
Speaker 3: allow yourself to do these baby steps and test it out.
Speaker 3: How are you feeling? Are you feeling better? Is it
Speaker 3: making is it making things better? Is it making things worse?
Speaker 3: And so allowing ourself the self compassion to engage in
Speaker 3: these baby steps, I think is really important.
Speaker 2: I think that's so true. Whenever I get out of
Speaker 2: the habit of running, which is now, I'll go do
Speaker 2: a lap at the reservoir. But I'll have to just
Speaker 2: tell myself the first couple of times I do it,
Speaker 2: the first month, even as long as I just get
Speaker 2: around the reservoir, even crawling is fine. You know, like
Speaker 2: expecting yourself to get back into running at a certain
Speaker 2: pace or doing things you know whole hog can be
Speaker 2: so intimidating you just want to give up right away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think you know, we're not good at
Speaker 3: understanding the amount of self compassion we need to motivate ourselves.
Speaker 3: I think again, this is a spot where I think
Speaker 3: our mind get it wrong. We think the right way
Speaker 3: to motivate ourselves is to become these horrid drill instructors
Speaker 3: and like yell at ourselves in our head in a
Speaker 3: way that we'd never speak to a friend or a
Speaker 3: child or someone we cared about hopefully, right, but that
Speaker 3: kind of just doesn't work. That convinces us that it's
Speaker 3: not good to try. We end up setting our standards lower,
Speaker 3: We end up procrastinating more. Self compassionate turns out, can
Speaker 3: actually allow you to engage in new habits better and
Speaker 3: more effectively and with less procrastination. That's not our theory.
Speaker 3: We like go for the drill sergeant approach. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: we'd be better off kind of, you know, mindfully paying
Speaker 3: attention to what's going on and recognizing that we're just
Speaker 3: human and giving ourselves a little bit more of a
Speaker 3: benefit of a doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I never want to obey a dick who's
Speaker 2: yelling at me, So why do I do that to myself? Right?
Speaker 3: And we're like, you know, the dickiest of dicks is
Speaker 3: often the person in our head, right. You know It's like, wait,
Speaker 3: I would never say, you know, that thing I just
Speaker 3: said to myself in my head. I would never say
Speaker 3: that to another human. Why am I talking to myself
Speaker 3: that way?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I would want to slap my own for saying that,
Speaker 2: you know, Like I'm yeah, I'm the hardest on myself
Speaker 2: more than I would ever tolerate in somebody else, which
Speaker 2: is so funny that we do that. But you know,
Speaker 2: you mentioned the term positive psychology before, and I'm so
Speaker 2: curious about that because I feel like I can't tell
Speaker 2: if it's flimplam or not that positive psychology is totally
Speaker 2: like a legit practice or is it something along the
Speaker 2: lines of like toxic positivity at all costs? Where what
Speaker 2: is positive psychology? What's what do scientist think of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the term positive psychology began when scientist
Speaker 3: Marley Seligmann, who kind of invented the field or thought
Speaker 3: that is the founder of the field. You really had
Speaker 3: this intuition that so much of psychology is about, you
Speaker 3: know what he called kind of below baseline, right like
Speaker 3: I'm trying to cure depression, I'm trying to cure anxiety
Speaker 3: or something like that. But he realized that we didn't
Speaker 3: he have is He called it a good science of
Speaker 3: kind of going above baseline. You know, there's baseline, and
Speaker 3: then there's feeling like you're flourishing, you know, then there's
Speaker 3: getting social connection, like feeling present, experiencing joy, and so
Speaker 3: he really christened this name of this field positive psychology,
Speaker 3: in order to focus on those things. But I think
Speaker 3: positive psychology gets the wrong rap. I think there's this
Speaker 3: idea that like, well, you have to only be positive.
Speaker 3: But you know, if you look at what this research
Speaker 3: is really showing, there's a lot of evidence that a real,
Speaker 3: true happy life, a successful life, a healthy life involves
Speaker 3: experiencing negative emotions, allowing those not running away from them.
Speaker 3: There's you know, lots of evidence suggesting that there are
Speaker 3: different techniques you can use to navigate those emotions and
Speaker 3: sort of feel them without getting like destroyed by them.
Speaker 3: And so I think, you know, when you hear these
Speaker 3: terms positive psychology, positivity, they can kind of feel a
Speaker 3: little cheesy and get a bad rap that it's like positive, positive,
Speaker 3: positive all the time. But but that's not really when
Speaker 3: you dig into the field. What it's showing my sense
Speaker 3: is that you know, the whole goal is to get
Speaker 3: to you know, this idea of you Diaminia, this rich,
Speaker 3: meaningful life, and you do that not through you know,
Speaker 3: putting blinders on and being a polym and like you know,
Speaker 3: trying only to experience happy, happy, happy, no matter what.
Speaker 3: You do that by having a full life, which is
Speaker 3: rich with lots of emotions and experiences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's such a good point about letting yourself
Speaker 2: feel those negative emotions, but not necessarily like succumbing to them,
Speaker 2: you know, not letting them win all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think we, you know, we get that wrong.
Speaker 3: Like I think our instinct again, is this idea that
Speaker 3: while there's some negative emotion, I should run away from that,
Speaker 3: or the right move would be to sort of suppress it,
Speaker 3: you know, stiff upper lip. But there's evidence from James
Speaker 3: Gross at Stanford that the act of suppressing our emotions
Speaker 3: can lead to things like increased cardiac stress, or even
Speaker 3: can cause us to have some problems with memory and
Speaker 3: decision making. You do worse on a memory test when
Speaker 3: you're trying to suppress some negative emotion, So it has
Speaker 3: negative costs. We're much better off if we can find
Speaker 3: ways to regulate and allow those emotions right to experience them,
Speaker 3: give them some time, and then be self compassionate and
Speaker 3: sure ourselves through them.
Speaker 2: Are there any myths about happiness that you find yourself
Speaker 2: constantly having to bust.
Speaker 3: All the time? I mean, you are as we've been
Speaker 3: talking about, Like our minds lie to us all the
Speaker 3: time about this stuff. I mean, the biggest one, the
Speaker 3: one that my students fall prey to so much, is
Speaker 3: that happiness is about circumstances. You know, that happiness is
Speaker 3: about money. In particular, my Yale students, we're all thinking
Speaker 3: about what job they want to get when they get
Speaker 3: out of this Ivy League university, and what salary they're
Speaker 3: going to get in things. You know, you tell them
Speaker 3: that after a certain reasonable middle class income, money doesn't
Speaker 3: matter for happiness anymore, and they want to fight you
Speaker 3: on it. They're like, well, you know, what if I
Speaker 3: spend it differently, or what if I went on vacation
Speaker 3: to these places over and over again. You're like, Nope,
Speaker 3: it doesn't cowt like or at the very least, It's
Speaker 3: not so much that money doesn't matter for happiness. It's
Speaker 3: just there are so many other things you could focus
Speaker 3: on that matter much much more.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, you know, if you go up like that
Speaker 3: minuscule amount, if you put all this work in and
Speaker 3: all this time in to earn more, maybe you get
Speaker 3: a teeny bomp. Maybe maybe not, But like if you
Speaker 3: just wrote down three things you're grateful for, that would
Speaker 3: work way more effectively, like we know that empirically.
Speaker 2: Is there a test where people can go figure out
Speaker 2: how happy I am? I?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also different spots online where you can do that.
Speaker 3: In fact, Marty Seligman, who we mentioned this, founder of
Speaker 3: Positive Psychology, has a website called Authentic Happiness. If you
Speaker 3: kind of google the authentic Happiness test.
Speaker 2: So yes, I checked this out, and if you google
Speaker 2: Authentic Happiness, you can help fellow you demonologists by taking
Speaker 2: scored questionnaires. They have Authentic Happiness Inventory, the General Happiness Scale,
Speaker 2: Positive and Negative Effect Questionnaire, the four Dice Emotions Questionnaire.
Speaker 2: I myself opted for the classic, the Authentic Happiness Inventory,
Speaker 2: and on a scale of one to five, Jared, what
Speaker 2: do you think? I got three? You know me too today? Yeah,
Speaker 2: three point oh eight. So maybe I'll meditate a bunch
Speaker 2: and then I'll take it in a few months. Also,
Speaker 2: I have no idea what all those different tests do,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure that the scientists know, and that's all
Speaker 2: that matters.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't need a fancy test really, kind
Speaker 3: of all things considered, how happy are you with your life?
Speaker 3: And this is the beauty. There's not for bitter or
Speaker 3: for worse, there's not a thermometer that we can use
Speaker 3: for happiness as scientists where we put it in like boop,
Speaker 3: you're ninety eight point six, you know happy? Uh? You know,
Speaker 3: you just have to answer it for yourself. And that
Speaker 3: kind of feels, you know a little bit not as
Speaker 3: legit scientifically, but in practice. That's what we're really trying
Speaker 3: to get at. We're trying to get at your own
Speaker 3: perception of how things are going. And if things are
Speaker 3: going well, then they're going well.
Speaker 2: Uh. Can I ask you some listener questions? Sure, But
Speaker 2: before that, let's aim a money canon at a worthy cause.
Speaker 2: This week, doctor Santos chose donors Choose dot org, which
Speaker 2: lets teachers list their classroom needs and then regular j
Speaker 2: Bronis like you and me can make their dreams come true.
Speaker 2: So Donors Choose has fulfilled one point seven million classroom projects,
Speaker 2: from butterfly cocoons to robotics kits, to pencils and paper
Speaker 2: and books with diverse characters. Okay, so modern day Ali
Speaker 2: here saying that when this first aired, we funded a
Speaker 2: few classrooms, and this time around we picked a few
Speaker 2: new ones to fund Missus Alvarado's classroom at Mains Elementary
Speaker 2: school in Calexico, California, needed funding to purchase some reading
Speaker 2: comprehension passages to motivate students to read and write. She
Speaker 2: also needed new chairs for the classroom for which apparently
Speaker 2: the United States does not have enough money, so teachers
Speaker 2: have to buy these things. So happy to find that
Speaker 2: for Missus Alvarado. Another classroom project funded was Missus Myers
Speaker 2: at their Good Marshall Elementary School in Moro, Georgia, who
Speaker 2: says that research has shown that hunger has a variety
Speaker 2: of detrimental effects on kids and that some of her
Speaker 2: students come from less fortunate homes and require additional resources
Speaker 2: and support. And we also tossed in a donation to
Speaker 2: Missus Perez Copperfield Elementary School and Converse, Texas for snacks
Speaker 2: for her students that may have financial barriers that limit
Speaker 2: their access to food and the snacks will provide them
Speaker 2: with brain power to focus while also removing the social
Speaker 2: stigma of going without a snack during the day. So
Speaker 2: thanks for doctor Santos for the heads up on donorschoos
Speaker 2: dot org and sponsors who made this round of donations possible.
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Speaker 2: Happy to ask your questions for Doctor Santos okay. Ariol
Speaker 2: Reagan wants to know do animals experience happiness? Are they
Speaker 2: happier than people?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really hard to ask animals about their happiness
Speaker 3: because you know, I can do the self report measure
Speaker 3: with you. It's harder to do that with a banana
Speaker 3: slug or banoba or something. Physiologically, we know they go
Speaker 3: through a lot of the same states as humans, but
Speaker 3: it's hard to know for sure if those physiological states
Speaker 3: correlate with this subjective state. I only know that you
Speaker 3: have the subjective state because you tell me. And so
Speaker 3: even though everything we can objectively look at like suggest
Speaker 3: that it, you know, we were feeling the same thing subjectively,
Speaker 3: it's really hard to know for sure.
Speaker 2: So one thing some scientists try to observe is play
Speaker 2: behavior like hop it around and running, chewing on stuff.
Speaker 2: My tiny poodle Angel she rubs her butt against stuff
Speaker 2: like a tire or my shoe. That's her version of
Speaker 2: typing hashtag blessed Portney Gratziana wants to know can anxious
Speaker 2: people be happy?
Speaker 3: I think anxious people can definitely be happy. I think
Speaker 3: there are a lot of strategies we can use to
Speaker 3: regulate and allow our anxiety. I think part of the
Speaker 3: problem with anxiety is that we try to run away
Speaker 3: from it, that we like, you know, try to avoid
Speaker 3: it at all costs. But that's yet another emotion that
Speaker 3: I think we can kind of sit with. Like feeling
Speaker 3: really anxious right now, it's nay out of ten, you
Speaker 3: can sort of surf that anxiety urge and get to
Speaker 3: the other side and then do some work to sort
Speaker 3: of nurture yourself. So I think you can be anxios
Speaker 3: and happy, just like you can be sad and happy,
Speaker 3: and you can be angry and happy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: To have a truly happy life requires experiencing all those
Speaker 3: emotions but finding ways to kind of navigate them so
Speaker 3: they don't take over.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm oh, that's really well said. Aiden Paco and
Speaker 2: Meg G want to know, is it flim flam that
Speaker 2: smiling actually makes you happier or is that a truth fact?
Speaker 2: Meg says and laughing, and a lot of other folks
Speaker 2: looking at you, patrons say see demos one oh one,
Speaker 2: Alexis Wallack and Ashley Herbal wa No, can you fake
Speaker 2: it till you make it?
Speaker 3: There's a lot of feedback that we get from other
Speaker 3: people's emotions, from like our own feedback from our own actions,
Speaker 3: you know, So pretending you're happy, acting like you're happy
Speaker 3: can often put you in a happy state, in part
Speaker 3: because it puts the people around you in a happy state.
Speaker 3: And we know that there's a lot of evidence for
Speaker 3: what's called emotional contagion. Right, just like, if I'm around
Speaker 3: happy people, I'm just going to catch the emotions of
Speaker 3: that happy person and the reverse, right, if I'm around
Speaker 3: those negative nelly is like, that's gonna I'm going to
Speaker 3: catch that too, And so there is a kind of
Speaker 3: fake it till you make it. There's associate with the
Speaker 3: people who have the emotions that you want to experience.
Speaker 3: It's a powerful way to kind of use your situation,
Speaker 3: your social environment to build in well being.
Speaker 2: Is there anything you can do for a friend who
Speaker 2: is feeling really unhappy to help them out as well? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think you know. The way to do it, I
Speaker 3: think really is to try to bring some of these
Speaker 3: practices in naturally, right. I mean, first of all, give
Speaker 3: that friends some social connection, right, just the very act
Speaker 3: of you talking to them, being around them, spending time
Speaker 3: with them is going to improve their well being. I
Speaker 3: think you can also bring your attitudes of that are positive, right.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're expressing things that you're grateful for,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're savoring things and feeling a little
Speaker 3: bit present. You know that that kind of thing is
Speaker 3: naturally going to rub off on them because of emotional contagion,
Speaker 3: because of behavioral contagion. But the biggest thing you can
Speaker 3: do is, I think check in, you know, check in
Speaker 3: and allow yourself to be present and be there for
Speaker 3: someone who needs you. Really powerful way to use your
Speaker 3: happiness to positively affect others.
Speaker 2: So if you ever think, why would I check up
Speaker 2: on someone I don't know how to fix things, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Just be alive and in their orbit and listen or
Speaker 2: tell them about how lizards have two dicks. That's what
Speaker 2: I do. Patrick Javronia's first time question asker wants to
Speaker 2: know happiness and the microbiome connection. What can we do
Speaker 2: to improve our microbiome is their connection? What's the deal?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Great, great question, And it's something that we don't
Speaker 3: have that much good data on yet. You know, everything
Speaker 3: we know suggests that microbiome effects all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: It would be surprising, I think, in some ways if
Speaker 3: it didn't affect our well being and our happiness. But
Speaker 3: you know, this is just a new area of work
Speaker 3: where we're learning new things all the time and we
Speaker 3: don't really have a great verdict yet. But you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to throw research money onto something that
Speaker 3: I think will be really telling in the next ten
Speaker 3: years of happiness science, I think microbiome might be a
Speaker 3: spot to do that.
Speaker 2: Nice you can just get in on poop on the
Speaker 2: ground floor. Let's ride this thing to the top.
Speaker 3: Everyoneop samples from very happy people. I'm in.
Speaker 2: I think that you literally can buy poop like on
Speaker 2: the black market for your own at home, like of
Speaker 2: fecal transplants ps. Of course I looked this up and
Speaker 2: getting an enema with someone else's poop. It's called fecal
Speaker 2: microbiotic transplantation. And in the Microbiology Gut Biome episode from
Speaker 2: November twenty eighteen, we go into detail about how our
Speaker 2: microbiomes are suffering from processed foods and artificial ingredients and
Speaker 2: overuse of antibiotics for things like viral infections that don't
Speaker 2: need antibiotics. So, given that up to ninety percent of
Speaker 2: our serotonin is synthesized in our simmering pooh filled guts
Speaker 2: diy fmts, do it yourself fecal microbiotic transplantations as they're called.
Speaker 2: They're getting more and more common as doctors are still
Speaker 2: reluctant to shove poo up our butts, even when we
Speaker 2: ask nicely. So according to a Journal of gastro Entrology
Speaker 2: article called Understanding the Scope of do it Yourself fecal
Speaker 2: microbiota transplant, eighty two percent of folks who tried it
Speaker 2: felt better afterwards, and ninety two percent of those knew
Speaker 2: their stool donner who I don't know. I guess you
Speaker 2: find by asking your friends who seems chill and has
Speaker 2: good poops, So you can ask a doctor to screen
Speaker 2: a donor sample and see if they'll do it. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of instructions on the internet. Apparently you buy
Speaker 2: a blunder, a goodwill or something, and then you maybe
Speaker 2: burn it later. None of this is my beeswax. Ask
Speaker 2: your doctors, don't sue me or make me a smoothie later.
Speaker 2: I'm good. Rahala wants to know first time question asker,
Speaker 2: is there any truth to the notion that people who
Speaker 2: are generally happy tend to live longer? And I want
Speaker 2: to say, my dad has cancer and his oncologists were
Speaker 2: saying just positivity is really helpful for patients in general. Okay,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Ali here, and my dad did pass
Speaker 2: away in the summer of twenty twenty two, and I
Speaker 2: talk about hospice tips and getting through grief in an
Speaker 2: episode July twenty twenty two. We'll link that in the
Speaker 2: show notes for anyone who's going through something similar. But
Speaker 2: I will say that my dad outlived his prognosis by
Speaker 2: eight years. And he stayed absolutely boldly optimistic throughout all
Speaker 2: of his treatment, and we all tried to booy his
Speaker 2: spirits in that direction. Do we find that statistically sound?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there are actually some strong evidence that
Speaker 3: happiness seems to affect our longevity in super interesting ways.
Speaker 3: One of the most famous studies on this looked at
Speaker 3: a group of individuals that had really similar lifestyles. Because,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, this is a hard study
Speaker 3: to do, right we want to ask, like, our happier
Speaker 3: people living longer, but of course there's lots of things
Speaker 3: that affect whether you live longer. And so the researchers
Speaker 3: tried to find a population that had like reasonably low
Speaker 3: risk factors and a really similar lifestyle, and they hit
Speaker 3: upon studying nuns. The way they did this was that
Speaker 3: they went back to nuns journals that they had in
Speaker 3: their twenties. I guess nuns, at least in one of
Speaker 3: these convents kind of did some journaling when they first
Speaker 3: joined the nunnery. So you go back when the nuns
Speaker 3: are in their twenties and you look at their journals
Speaker 3: and you do like a text analysis, like, you know,
Speaker 3: you run the text of their journals through something that
Speaker 3: pulls out all the happy words and pulls out all
Speaker 3: the kind of negative words or just like any emotion
Speaker 3: words whatsoever. And then you use those textual analyses to
Speaker 3: predict how many of the nuns live into their eighties
Speaker 3: and nineties. And what you find is that the happier
Speaker 3: nuns are just living surprisingly longer, you know, in some cases,
Speaker 3: like decades longer than the nuns on average, who are
Speaker 3: just sadder, which is really quite striking. It suggests that
Speaker 3: happiness right might really be affecting like how long we live.
Speaker 3: So yeah, important important to focus on, not just because
Speaker 3: happiness feels good, but it might make you live longer too.
Speaker 2: Patron Anika Callen asked why are feelings of happiness stronger
Speaker 2: when you're younger? And RL Shaoul pelegg Page and r
Speaker 2: J Deroutge wanted to know if happier people tend to
Speaker 2: be of a certain gender or age. RJ wants to
Speaker 2: make sure they don't become a grumpy crank who hates everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wonder do we find that people get happier as
Speaker 2: they age or crankier as they age?
Speaker 3: Yeah? On average, the data really suggests happier. There's some
Speaker 3: interesting like lifespan work on happiness. You know, you're kind
Speaker 3: of happy when you're young, and then as you become
Speaker 3: like an adult in middle aged, especially after you have children,
Speaker 3: in fact, you know, happiness tends to dip. But then
Speaker 3: as soon as you kind of go back to empty nesting,
Speaker 3: you know, when the kids go off to college, then
Speaker 3: the slope of happiness kind of goes back up, And
Speaker 3: so it's something to look forward to as you age.
Speaker 3: On average, older people tend to be happier, how.
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't sure about that and kids, and
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought to ask that. But I have friends
Speaker 2: who have kids. I have friends who don't have kids.
Speaker 2: I myself have a daughter. She's a dog, and that's
Speaker 2: which she's probably the only kid I'm going to have.
Speaker 2: And she's an animal. But I don't know, Like in general,
Speaker 2: is that the case is just the stress of having kids,
Speaker 2: but then the satisfaction that you did it later, so
Speaker 2: it's kind of like a like it balances. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think this is one of the spots where those
Speaker 3: two constructs of happiness can be so powerful, the sort
Speaker 3: of happiness in your life and happiness with your life.
Speaker 3: Lots of evidence that kids kind of boost the happiness
Speaker 3: with your life. You know, you get the sense of
Speaker 3: meaning and so on. But if you look at people's
Speaker 3: time budgets in terms of what they spend their time on,
Speaker 3: the thing that often feels the most miserable is spending
Speaker 3: time with your kids. Like in your life, you know,
Speaker 3: when you're picking up you know, the toys and dealing
Speaker 3: with the dirty diapers and things. That is the thing
Speaker 3: that people seem to on average enjoy kind of the least.
Speaker 3: It ranks up there with like commuting and like shopping
Speaker 3: for groceries. You know, not like a heavy endorsement, but
Speaker 3: that's kind of complicated. I think that's one of these
Speaker 3: reasons that you know, these constructs are kind of helpful.
Speaker 3: There are certain things that you do for meaning that
Speaker 3: in the moment don't feel great, but they wind up
Speaker 3: giving you meaning. And I think the tips are powerful too,
Speaker 3: because the air hacks you can do to enjoy your
Speaker 3: time more with your kids. Right, if you have strategies
Speaker 3: for managing stress and negative emotions, that can probably make
Speaker 3: your time with your kids even happier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so in awe of people who do have kids,
Speaker 2: just because it seems so challenging, and I know myself,
Speaker 2: I'm like so scatterbrained that I feel like I just
Speaker 2: don't necessarily feel like that would be my strong suit.
Speaker 2: But there are some people who love kiteboarding and others
Speaker 2: who are like, no, thank you, Like I would rather
Speaker 2: be on the beach reading a book. So it really
Speaker 2: depends on what you like.
Speaker 3: You know, and I think you're doing it right because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of evidence that the furry babies, especially dogs,
Speaker 3: there's more research on dogs, really do have a significant
Speaker 3: effect on happiness. But again that research is interesting because
Speaker 3: it's not the dogs per se. It's kind of the
Speaker 3: benefits that we get from dogs. So dogs get us
Speaker 3: out exercising. Dogs allow us to make more social connections.
Speaker 3: They are a social connection, but then they also let
Speaker 3: us socially connect with people. They make us more present.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're with your dog and you know
Speaker 3: you're playing fetch with your dog, it's hard to like
Speaker 3: be distracted or checking your email, right, And so it
Speaker 3: seems like dogs don't necessarily inherently make us happier, but
Speaker 3: they make us do a lot of the practices I've
Speaker 3: mentioned that lead to higher happiness.
Speaker 2: First, time. Question asker Alana Rickman asks has the rapid
Speaker 2: development in technology in the last few years had an
Speaker 2: overall increase or decrease in people's happiness and patrons. Diana
Speaker 2: ash Gelhouse, Jenna Mandola, Lucas O'Neill, Nicole Kleinman all echoed that,
Speaker 2: And yeah, I wonder too in terms of being in
Speaker 2: the moment, is being on our phone does that take
Speaker 2: us out of the moment? Is that take us into
Speaker 2: a kind of another like universe or galaxy of what's
Speaker 2: happening in this digital realm versus what's happening around us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean when you think about technology, it's worth
Speaker 3: remembering we can do technology for We can use technology
Speaker 3: for all kinds of things, right, you know, we could
Speaker 3: use technology to scribble in a gratitude journal, or I
Speaker 3: could pick up a phone and call my mom, right
Speaker 3: and have a social connection. Often we're not using our
Speaker 3: technology in ways that boost happiness. We could, but often
Speaker 3: where checking social media, you're getting this sort of nutri
Speaker 3: suite social connection, but not real stuff. I'm distracted and
Speaker 3: not paying attention to the real things in life. I
Speaker 3: could be present, looking at the trees or talking to
Speaker 3: the people around me. But you know, I'm scrolling through,
Speaker 3: you know, some dumb thing on the Internet. And so
Speaker 3: it's not that technology in and of itself is bad.
Speaker 3: It's just that the way we use it often is bad,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of built to make it harder for
Speaker 3: us to use it. Well, you know, every app is
Speaker 3: in some ways competing for your attention, right They want
Speaker 3: to notify you of stuff and have the dings that
Speaker 3: sort of give you a little burst of reward every
Speaker 3: time you get some new piece of information. And that
Speaker 3: means that our apps and our technology is kind of
Speaker 3: constantly competing with real life, you know, for our attention. Sadly,
Speaker 3: I think there's domains in which the technology is sort
Speaker 3: of winning, you know, which which makes sense.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: At my podcast, I talked to the University of British
Speaker 3: Columbia researcher Liz Done, and she had this lovely quote
Speaker 3: where she's like, you know, imagine if to your next
Speaker 3: you know, like dinner date with your husband, like you
Speaker 3: took a big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow it was
Speaker 3: you know, DVDs of every movie you've ever seen, you know,
Speaker 3: a big pile of CDs of every song in the universe,
Speaker 3: like printouts of every family reunion ever, like you know,
Speaker 3: printouts of all your emails, like you know, big piles
Speaker 3: of porn right, Like you know, if there was a
Speaker 3: wheelbarrow with all that stuff next to you, you'd be
Speaker 3: distract You'd want to be going through it the whole dinner.
Speaker 3: I'd be like, oh, let me go back to my
Speaker 3: family reunion dat. Yeah. But like what she says, like
Speaker 3: your brain isn't stupid, Like your brain knows that on
Speaker 3: the other side of your iPhone is all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So there's something constantly in your brain that has to
Speaker 3: be like no, no, no, no, pay attention to this conversation
Speaker 3: because you know, don't check your email, don't check your email,
Speaker 3: and that kind of is constantly a little bit depleting.
Speaker 3: It's definitely distracting, but it's a little bit depleting as well.
Speaker 2: Just this weird real barrow.
Speaker 3: I mean when you think about what's on the other
Speaker 3: you know, like weather predict you know, like printouts of
Speaker 3: weather predictions, every every TikTok video and the history of
Speaker 3: the internet, right, I mean it's a huge it's a
Speaker 3: huge slot machine and sadly, you know, I mean I
Speaker 3: love my husband. We have some great conversations, But is
Speaker 3: every conversation with my husband more interesting than literally everything
Speaker 3: on the internet, Like you know, not necessarily. And what
Speaker 3: that means is we're so tempted by that stuff over
Speaker 3: in real life social connection, even though we know that
Speaker 3: the in real life stuff is going to make us
Speaker 3: so much happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a good way to look at it,
Speaker 2: is to understand just what our brain is sort of
Speaker 2: grappling with, why it's difficult. It's not like a personal
Speaker 2: failing that we sometimes look to that, But but yeah,
Speaker 2: I definitely find that when I'm looking for something to
Speaker 2: sort of boost my dopamineor happiness, I'll go to my
Speaker 2: phone and then I'll after an hour, I'll go like,
Speaker 2: I was, think that really did the trick. If I
Speaker 2: had practiced and thinks they knew might be longer lasting.
Speaker 2: But at least I can't blame myself for why I
Speaker 2: was looking. Anthony had a great question asked, what if
Speaker 2: certain aspects of your happiness or the pursuit of your
Speaker 2: happiness cause others you care about to be unhappy, thereby
Speaker 2: making you unhappy. What about those circumstances where you're worried
Speaker 2: that your happiness might make other people dislike you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I think again. You know, if we're really
Speaker 3: going for true happiness, my guess is that those cases
Speaker 3: are occurring probably less often than you think. And by
Speaker 3: that I mean what you know, the real happiness seems
Speaker 3: to come from doing acts of kindness for other people.
Speaker 3: Real happiness seems to come from focusing on the happiness
Speaker 3: of others, right, you know, So already you know, we're
Speaker 3: kind of in a bind of like, well, other people
Speaker 3: aren't happy, then that's probably going to mean we're not happy.
Speaker 3: Rights we've talked about, happiness doesn't seem to come from
Speaker 3: our circumstances. So it's not like we're trying to be
Speaker 3: other people or go after these accolades. Right, happiness comes
Speaker 3: from being grateful and present from what you have. And
Speaker 3: so my guess is that more often than not, if
Speaker 3: you're pursuing happiness correctly, right, you know, based on what
Speaker 3: the science suggests, you're just not going to run into
Speaker 3: situations where you're sort of competing or hurting other people's happiness.
Speaker 3: Because other people's happiness is part and parcel of getting
Speaker 3: true happiness.
Speaker 2: And if you're worried someone in your life will be
Speaker 2: upset at your happiness. Just know it's your life and
Speaker 2: it's okay to feel good. If anyone has a problem
Speaker 2: with it, that is their own baggage to address. I
Speaker 2: highly suggest some of Melanie Baty's writings about codependency. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to leave that suggestion right there for you.
Speaker 2: Ben de Wurst says, I'm just finishing up my MBA
Speaker 2: and in one of my classes, they talked about how
Speaker 2: optimism is actually an attribute of emotional intelligence and can
Speaker 2: be learned as an optimist. To myself, I'd always considered
Speaker 2: it more of a part of my personality like extrovert
Speaker 2: or introverted and unteachable. So how would someone go about
Speaker 2: learning and training to be an optimist and what's the
Speaker 2: relationship there? Also, is there a relationship between happiness and
Speaker 2: emotional or just like IQ intelligence, I feel like there's
Speaker 2: some badge of like if you're unhappy, it must mean
Speaker 2: that you know more and therefore you're smarter.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I don't know of any data that have
Speaker 3: looks specifically at IQ and happiness. My guess is there's
Speaker 3: probably not the relationship that you're looking at, but there
Speaker 3: is definitely a relationship between happiness and optimism. Obviously, I
Speaker 3: think sort of optimism is sort of part of our
Speaker 3: general happy life and the good news according to based
Speaker 3: on this question, is like you can in fact learn
Speaker 3: these kinds of things.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The fastest thing to do is really try to just
Speaker 3: train your brain to pay attention to good things out there.
Speaker 3: Our minds are naturally tuned to negative things, you know,
Speaker 3: the yucky stuff out there, the griping. But we can
Speaker 3: tune our minds towards positive things. You can focus on
Speaker 3: what you're grateful for. Another practice that I've been into lately,
Speaker 3: which I talk about on the podcast, is focusing on delights.
Speaker 3: Sometimes gratitude can feel sort of cheesy, but you can
Speaker 3: just focus on like things that are delightful out there,
Speaker 3: you know, like you know, the sunshine and like that's delightful.
Speaker 3: The fact that coffee exists, that's delightful. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't know, some funny video on the internet that's delightful, right,
Speaker 3: Like training your brain towards things that you really enjoy
Speaker 3: that kind of cause delight.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if the term gratitude journaling conjureds up visions
Speaker 2: of sickly sweetened cameralt just opt to the term delights,
Speaker 2: which is just like a straightforward good cup of coffee. Actually,
Speaker 2: for years, my husband Jared has cited a short tally
Speaker 2: of favorite things. His are lavender, soap, coffee, and sandwiches,
Speaker 2: And he says just thinking of those three things and
Speaker 2: letting his mind wander to more helped him during a
Speaker 2: really deep depression. So gratitude journaling delights, whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call it. Jarrett calls his his do Not Kill
Speaker 2: Yourself List, which is kind of like the Miami Cola
Speaker 2: Bang energy drink of a gratitude practice branding. Would you
Speaker 2: agree that's my favorite Bang flavor?
Speaker 3: Is there really Miami Cola.
Speaker 2: That's on the list.
Speaker 3: Again, your brain is going to focus on whatever you
Speaker 3: give it data for. So if you give it data
Speaker 3: about things that you're feeling really grateful about or that
Speaker 3: are really delightful, that's what your brain's going to start noticing.
Speaker 2: I love that you just are You're constantly filling evidence
Speaker 2: full for like things are shitty and things are good.
Speaker 2: It's like what are you putting in your evidence folder?
Speaker 2: Pretty much, and.
Speaker 3: It's not just like you know what you're picking it's
Speaker 3: like you're you're training your brain to look for that stuff.
Speaker 3: In my podcast, I interview this fantastic guest, Rosque, who's
Speaker 3: a poet and an essays who is this book called
Speaker 3: the Book of Delights And he decided that for every
Speaker 3: day for a year after his birthday, he would write
Speaker 3: an essay about something that delighted him. And he talks
Speaker 3: about how at first he was like really worried, like
Speaker 3: am I really going to find things that really delight me?
Speaker 3: And he said that, you know, even just a week in,
Speaker 3: like he'd kind of tuned his mind to find these things.
Speaker 3: You know, a walking down the street'd be like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that dude's T shirt is delightful, Like oh that like
Speaker 3: cat on the street is delightful. Like he just he
Speaker 3: just kind of shifted his perception and tuned his mind
Speaker 3: more towards the good things than the bad things. Our
Speaker 3: brains evolutionarily are naturally tuned towards the bad things. Make sense,
Speaker 3: You want to see the tiger that's going to jump
Speaker 3: out at you. Yeah, But we can control that tuning
Speaker 3: and just by you know, like taking some explicit work
Speaker 3: to pay attention to the things we're grateful for. To
Speaker 3: the things that delight us, to the good stuff out there.
Speaker 2: So yes, rask the Book of Delights, and again check
Speaker 2: out neilb. Has Recha's work and his osomology episode. Another
Speaker 2: fun project, Start a private Twitter just for yourself and
Speaker 2: chronicle delights of your own or a private Instagram account
Speaker 2: or something. Also, I should note that in recording this episode,
Speaker 2: the internet dropped out a few times, so I had
Speaker 2: to email doctor Santos a new link during it, and
Speaker 2: she has an auto reply message explaining that she may
Speaker 2: not write back, and it explains that she gets more
Speaker 2: than one hundred emails a day and it reads, in
Speaker 2: part quote, keeping up with that many questions slash requests
Speaker 2: meant that I was hurting my own time affluence and
Speaker 2: having less time for the important projects I really should
Speaker 2: be prioritizing. And so I am currently trying my own
Speaker 2: personal wellbeing experiment. I'm going to try to practice what
Speaker 2: I preach and reduce the amount of time I usually
Speaker 2: spend on email. Thanks for your understanding as I try
Speaker 2: not to overcommit and protect myself from burning out. Oh,
Speaker 2: I love her totally solid major props for walking her talk.
Speaker 2: She is the best and in respecting her time, we
Speaker 2: wrapped it up. Last listener question, I saved it because
Speaker 2: it was juicy. Oh, it's so juicy. Bailey Ricketts wants
Speaker 2: to know how do we find a balance between being
Speaker 2: happy and living in the moment while acknowledging all the
Speaker 2: hurt and suffering going on in the world, essentially guilt
Speaker 2: over being happy when you know that there's a lot
Speaker 2: of bad shit out there. How do we do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, tough. I mean, this is like a really
Speaker 3: real one, right because there's a lot of bad stuff
Speaker 3: out there right now, you know, structural racism, horrible global pandemic,
Speaker 3: you know, like the list goes on. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think one thing that helps me is recognizing that
Speaker 3: if I want to be the kind of person who's
Speaker 3: a ally for all that stuff, all the yucky stuff
Speaker 3: in the world, who wants to have the resilience to
Speaker 3: fix it, I'm not gonna be able to do that
Speaker 3: if I'm incredibly anxious and overwhelmed and burnt out. I'm
Speaker 3: going to be able to do that best if I'm
Speaker 3: really in a happy state, if I'm really kind of
Speaker 3: feeling good, like if I kind of have put my
Speaker 3: own oxygen mask on first right, And in fact, there's
Speaker 3: evidence that so many of the things we were talking
Speaker 3: about that are parts of a happy life help for
Speaker 3: doing hard things. My favorite one is that people who
Speaker 3: are grateful are better at what's called self regulation. They're
Speaker 3: better at, you know, doing the hard thing today to
Speaker 3: help their future self, whether that's you know, saving for
Speaker 3: retirement or eating healthier, or you know, putting work into
Speaker 3: hard scary problems like that just require a lot of hard,
Speaker 3: scary work. And so for me, it's made me feel like,
Speaker 3: if I want the world to be a better place,
Speaker 3: I can't afford to be down in the dumps, you know,
Speaker 3: freaking out about it. I really need to put energy
Speaker 3: into doing these practices for myself so that I'll be
Speaker 3: you know, hopefully one of the people that has the
Speaker 3: bandwidth to help with some of this stuff. So far
Speaker 3: from feeling guilty, I feel like we might want to
Speaker 3: feel guilty for the opposite thing, right, you know, do
Speaker 3: what we can to kind of fix things. It really
Speaker 3: does require not just working on these structures, but working
Speaker 3: on our emotions so that we have the bandwidth to
Speaker 3: fix those structures that might be messed up.
Speaker 2: That just I'm sure gave so many people permission to
Speaker 2: pursue happiness who feel maybe guilty about it, and I'm
Speaker 2: by so many people I mean me specifically, But no,
Speaker 2: that's really helpful. Last two questions I asked before we go,
Speaker 2: worst thing about your job, worst thing about being at
Speaker 2: model of doologist, and the best thing.
Speaker 3: There's lots and lots of good things. But you know,
Speaker 3: if I have to shift towards negativity, you know, I
Speaker 3: would say the hardest thing is that you know they're
Speaker 3: One of the things I really try to pay attention to.
Speaker 3: Is this phenomenon of time affluence, this subjective sense that
Speaker 3: I have a lot of free time, and being a
Speaker 3: happiness guru, especially in an age where there's a lot
Speaker 3: of bad stuff going on in a global pandemic, it
Speaker 3: keeps me pretty busy because you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: people want advice, a lot of people want help, and
Speaker 3: that means I have to put a lot of work
Speaker 3: in to protect my time. So the hardest thing is
Speaker 3: protecting my time in the midst of everything else going on.
Speaker 2: I can totally understand that I just got your auto
Speaker 2: apply that was like, yo, I get like a one
Speaker 2: hundred emails a day, Thank you so much, But I
Speaker 2: got to stick to my principal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's hard, right, because you know, I get
Speaker 3: into my emox and I'm like, Oh, that listener has
Speaker 3: this really cool thing to say, or that student has
Speaker 3: this really cool question. But I also know that if
Speaker 3: I answer all those that means I'm not spending time
Speaker 3: with the people I care about and I'm not just
Speaker 3: having time to meditate an exercise. So it's hard prioritizing
Speaker 3: the right stuff. But time affluence is definitely something I
Speaker 3: need to work on prioritize. I never heard those words.
Speaker 2: Before, Butler loved them. Best thing about your job, best
Speaker 2: thing about your career.
Speaker 3: Oh man, there's so many best things. I mean, I
Speaker 3: honestly think the best things are my students. I love
Speaker 3: them so much. I love interacting with them. They teach
Speaker 3: me so much, and I'm so privileged to get to
Speaker 3: work with them.
Speaker 2: That's great. I'm I am so happy to talk to you.
Speaker 2: I have been a fan girl for a year. So
Speaker 2: ask smart people happy questions or farmmer questions. They are
Speaker 2: wonderful and they're great at sharing their knowledge. Obviously, get
Speaker 2: more of doctor Lourie's with her podcast at Happiness Lab.
Speaker 2: Her socials are linked in the show notes. She is
Speaker 2: great if you can take her course, take it. It's
Speaker 2: also available on Coursera for free, so look for that.
Speaker 2: I will link all of those on my website too,
Speaker 2: which is at aliward dot com slash ologies. We are
Speaker 2: at ali Ward with one L on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: We're also at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. Find us
Speaker 2: there be our friends. Thank you to Aaron Talbert, who
Speaker 2: moderates and admin's Theologies podcast Facebook group and is excellent
Speaker 2: at that. Also now we have Smologies episodes up in
Speaker 2: their own feed. Just look for Smologies wherever you get
Speaker 2: podcasts and subscribe and spread the word. You'll find this
Speaker 2: new green logo and Smologies are all swear free. They're
Speaker 2: safe for all ages. It's s M O l O
Speaker 2: g I E S for your small ones. Thank you
Speaker 2: Emily White of the Wordery. She is a professional transcriptionist
Speaker 2: who makes transcriptions available.
Speaker 3: She's great.
Speaker 2: Hire her, She's wonderful. Caleb Patten bleeps our apisodes. Those
Speaker 2: are available on our website for free. The links in
Speaker 2: the show note. We also have Smologies, which are episodes
Speaker 2: we put out once every two weeks. They are cut
Speaker 2: down versions of classic ones that have already ran. They
Speaker 2: are cleaned up and kid friendly. They're ready for the classroom.
Speaker 2: Solo persmologies too if you have smologites. Thank you to
Speaker 2: Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale for helping me take care
Speaker 2: of all the ologies business behind the scenes. Thank you
Speaker 2: to Stephen Ray Morris and Zeke Rodriguez Thomas who are
Speaker 2: also working on smologies and wonderful. Thank you to editor
Speaker 2: Jared Sleeper, and also thank you to g Remy. We
Speaker 2: are actually recording this in the car as I'm on
Speaker 2: my way up to see my pop for his birthday.
Speaker 2: And I recorded this at five in the morning this
Speaker 2: morning before I hit the road, and then I realized
Speaker 2: that my mic gain was all the way down, so
Speaker 2: I had to rerecord it on side of the road,
Speaker 2: which is what we're doing. Eh. That's one secret of
Speaker 2: the episode. The other secret is, you know how sometimes
Speaker 2: it'll be like if you need to clean a screen,
Speaker 2: just use a microfibercloth, and you're like, yeah, well what
Speaker 2: do I use to clean it with? Though? Like deck,
Speaker 2: what are we talking here? Water? What do I use?
Speaker 2: At the microfiber cloth? So I just tried just the
Speaker 2: microfiber cloth, like you're supposed to use, and it cleaned
Speaker 2: the shit out of my laptop, like my monitor's never
Speaker 2: been so clean. All I did was use one of
Speaker 2: those microfiber too soft on your hands cloths, and apparently
Speaker 2: they're good at what they're supposed to be used for,
Speaker 2: So go figure Okay byeye pacodermatology, amology, crypto zoology, lithology, duinology, meteorology, patology, napology, ceiology, selinology.
Speaker 2: This is a sound of my dog drinking water in
Speaker 2: the car. Okay, twenty twenty four me thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: Back next week with a very fresh new episode about
Speaker 2: something in your bed. Trust me, it's good.
Speaker 3: Okay, bybye.
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